


Til I'm Blue

by honestys_easy



Category: Music RPF, Real Person Fiction, Tulsa Gangstas
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-08
Updated: 2009-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestys_easy/pseuds/honestys_easy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy is the voice that brings Neal's words to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til I'm Blue

Neal had his pen to finely lined paper, hovering over the words not yet written, but all that ran through his head were the soothing sounds of Andy Skib in his ear.

It was funny, he supposed, but for the past few years Andy's voice had always been there like ever-present songbirds in spring, his presence so naturally close to Neal; like a second skin, a living security blanket. One engaging conversation in the aisle of a long-shuttered guitar shop and an eager, approving smile, and the two men knew this would be a friendship to document in ancient record books, a friendship to be revered and emulated for decades; lasting. Ever since that moment and the weekend afterwards, when they spent all forty-eight hours in Neal's basement writing, jamming, and learning the subtle intricacies of each other's style - both musical and personal - they found themselves to be inseparable.

_"I'm not very good." His fingers danced around the keys like a choreographed tango, flitting back and forth, the swell and ebb of emotion unhindered by the synthetic sound of an electric keyboard. Neal couldn't tell if Andy had meant that about his playing ability or his songwriting because the older man had yet to find a flaw in either. Maybe he just meant he wasn't as innocent or delicate as his slight frame indicated. Neal would have to investigate that further._

_"Are you shittin' me?" he protested, dropping that moment of hesitation in his gut down to the floor and grinding it into his boot heel as he stepped over to the keyboard, mimicking the lucid movements of Andy's right hand an octave higher on the register. "You're awesome." He was suddenly very aware of the closeness of Andy's body to his, how, if he stretched a brightly tattooed arm over to keys an octave below Andy's other hand he'd be close enough to smell the other man's aftershave, count the hairs on the back of his neck as they started to rise. From the brief, stuttered stumble of Andy's melody, Neal could tell the younger man was aware of the closeness, too._

_Andy looked back, hint of a smile on his face. If Neal leaned in any closer their cheeks would touch; **more** than that would touch. "Not as much as you," he replied, a blush creeping its way onto his face despite himself. His fingers played along on autopilot, a nervous habit he had picked up sometime in adolescence. A particular run along the keys caused his hand to bump right into Neal's along its journey; Andy looked down, startled, but didn't make any move to take his hand away._

_He should have broken the contact; he knows that now. But his hand moved of its own accord to cover Andy's, finger along finger, as if he were guiding the younger man to the notes instead of coming along for the ride. "Well, we'll just have to work on that," he said with a grin. He still couldn't figure out if he and Andy were talking about music or something else, but their conversations always blurred that line, and Neal realized he didn't really care._

A slight pressure nudged against Neal's shoulder, and the soft sound of a familiar snoring broke into his train of thought. He didn't need to tear his eyes away from the page before him to know that was Andy's head slumped against his shoulder, drifting off far into dreams as he shifted himself towards the fleur-de-lis along Neal's neck, just as he did while waking. But the temptation to look was too strong and there it was, Andy's ever-watchful and insightful eyes closed in sleep, lips parted just a centimeter with delicious, hot breath passing through along with the snores, the pad of paper previously in his lap sliding effortlessly down to the floor.

Yes, Neal thought with a wistful smile on his face as he eased into the comfort of the other man's weight against his, Andy had always been there for him since they met, in some form or another. The voice to his words; the melody to his harmony. The one that, once he started writing with him, made Neal realize he had never created songs more poignant and beautiful than when Andy was by his side.

_"Did you hear that? Did you hear that!" Andy's large, expressive eyes were filled with excitement and Neal thought the young man could get hoarse with how much he wanted to scream along with the crowd. Andy pointed his arm out towards the stage, shielded by heavy curtains, his fingers gripping the neck of his guitar like hanging off of a cliff's edge; like Neal imagined he could grip the sheets atop Neal's bed. But even through the sound-deafening fabric of the stage curtains, Neal could hear the roar of the audience, the applause and the screams he associated more with Beatlemania or Britney Spears instead of himself and his best friend._

_Neal nodded, his demure grin the polar opposite of Andy's energy, though the excitement of killing in concert was flowing through his veins, stoking a heat inside him, proving to him his place in life was on that stage, with Andy. It was an equal thrill to see Andy like this, the typically quiet and reserved young man with wild, wide eyes, heart pumping with performance adrenaline and a smile threatening to break out into full, open-mouthed laughter at any moment._

_All the stories Neal was told by the musicians gone to seed in the record stores were true: being on stage with your music, your creation...it was better than sex. He had remarked about that to Andy only once, and watched as the younger man's face grew crimson, reminding Neal that it was a comparison Andy had yet to make. His own cheeks grew flushed when he thought about how he wanted to change all that, too._

_With quick strides and an inherent care not to damage the guitar in Andy's outstretched hand or the one hanging about his shoulders, Neal closed the gap between them and pressed his palm to Andy's cheek, touched his lips against his. Andy's body was nearly humming with excitement and Neal felt it like a shock upon his lips, a conduit for the power and raw energy inside the younger man's body. He responded in kind, flitting out a tongue along Neal's lips, toying with the steel ring there, asking for more. Andy tasted like the stale beer Neal smuggled to him when the bar's owner wouldn't sell to his fresh face; he smelled the sweat of the stage in Andy's skin, and something deeper than that, headier, that reminded him of the thick air of his basement as they painstakingly created the songs they had played tonight._

_And when they parted, Neal's thumb ghosting against Andy's jaw, the hollow of his neck, up to graze the corner of his still-grinning mouth, the sound that came from Andy's lips made Neal realize there were so many more songs he wanted to write for that voice._

_"Sounds like," Neal finally replied, feeling the coiled springs of Andy's excitement suddenly fueled by something other than the crowd. He pulled back the stage curtain, revealing themselves to their audience once more. "They're asking for an encore."_

Casting his eyes down once again on the sheet of paper in front of him, Neal thought about the songs they had written together, the notebooks he'd filled with music, their margins filled to capacity with changes and modifications, Andy's delicate handwriting a stark contrast to his scrawl. There were too many to count by now: scribbles of notes and verses they never followed up on, the jam sessions that turned into songs rejected by the rest of the group...songs that never made it past that basement and songs they swore to one another they'd get on the radio one day. Neal wouldn't consider writing without Andy, and conversely, he couldn't think of the younger man, look at his face or hear his laughter even in a crowd, without being reminded of the music they had made, of what had been written and what stood between them not yet committed to paper. Andy was music; music was Andy, and Neal couldn't imagine his life without either one.

There were a few lines written on the edges of the page in front of him, the lined sheets already filled with music drafted months ago during one of his feverish music binges, where his head wouldn't emerge from the paper or his hands part from his guitar for days, forgoing sleep and food; the ones his friend David commonly called habitual demonic possession. He had shown the other guys the music earlier in the week, got the unaffected, approving nods he expected, encouraging him to continue on with lyrics...all except from Andy, whose lips were silent but his eyes told Neal all he needed to know. He had written with Neal for years now, known every nuance of his notes, could search and tinker through a chicken-scratch pad of music and pull out a miracle. He could work Neal's rough drafts like he could work Neal himself, touching, smoothing, the delicateness of a piano's keys ghosting over guitar melodies like Andy's hands over tattooed skin.

And he had never heard anything like this from Neal before.

_That alcohol haze he knew so well after a concert settled deep into his bones, numbing him from the inside out to the frigid Oklahoma air. He should have closed the window for more reasons than the February wind, but at that moment not even a hurricane could get him to move from this spot._

_"Scared?"_

_He didn't need to ask, it was written all over Andy's face: the way his smile flickered on and off like a chippy light, eyes not meeting Neal's though their faces were inches apart; how his naked limbs were trembling ever so slightly against his._

_"Kinda," the younger man shrugged, an attempt to play it cool, but then nodded, knowing he'd never be able to hide anything from Neal, nor did he ever want to. "Yeah." He curved his back down from his straddling position to kiss Neal, capture lips that always gave him confidence in more ways than one. Steeling himself, he rested his forehead against Neal's, locking their eyes; Neal was trembling, too._

_There were already two fingers inside him, sliding in and out as if they were struggling to find their way back home; Andy knew without even looking the ink on those fingers spelled out "GO," and he shuddered, thrusting against them, pressing himself down to the knuckle and past the fear. "GO," indeed._

_"We can stop," Neal contradicted his own actions as the fingers slipped away, the hand now supporting a hovering Andy above him, hips moving towards his heat on their own accord._

_Andy shook his head, shaggy brown hair tickling against the sides of Neal's face. He was speechless at the moment he felt Neal enter him, a sudden pressure ripping through his body he wanted to jump away from and run towards at the same time; he had no words because Neal had not yet written them. The wide eyes that had been staring into Neal's closed, rolling back in Andy's head a split second before they squinted shut. Neal went to kiss him but at that moment Andy gave out a moan, coursing through his body and Neal's as he pressed his open mouth to his. Neal felt the vibration, felt everything about Andy at that moment, and knew those old fools at the record store were wrong: there was nothing more amazing than sex like this._

Before he realized through his meandering thoughts and the intoxicating feeling of Andy's breath along his neck, his hand had been busy writing down words to the notes on the page, thoughts and feelings he had even been unaware lay within his brain, his heart. He traced the words with his fingers, imagining Andy's voice wrapping itself around each note because Neal's range would never do it justice, and because there was no possible world where Andy Skib's voice would not sing the words Neal Tiemann wrote. Just the thought alone sent a shudder through his body; Andy had sung Neal's songs before, naturally, they had been the perfect creative pair since they met, it had always been this way and it always would be. But Neal never had him sing anything like this.

David would think it was about some girl. David _always_ thought it was about some girl.

"Hey." Andy's voice spoke up, hoarse from disuse, his limbs stretching the sleep from their tendons but his head still pleasantly resting against Neal's shoulder. He gave a quick peck to the inked skin along Neal's neck simply because it was in the vicinity of his lips, then traced a line along its patterns with his tongue, enjoying the way Neal's body shuddered against his once more.

Neal allowed himself a satisfied hum in the back of his throat over Andy's ministrations, slinging his right arm over the younger man's shoulders to bring him in closer. "Hey." These were the moments, the quiet moments as Neal silently contemplated and Andy pleasantly dreamed, as the two men awoke in each other's arms, tangled in the sheets, forgetting in whose bed they finally crashed...the rare moments without music or noise that Neal cherished like diamonds. He placed a kiss along Andy's hairline, smiling against the skin when Andy shifted his body to get closer. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

That received a groan from Andy, who, although he tried valiantly over the years, was not the night owl Neal had evolved into and was always teased over it; he simply couldn't last. "Was just resting my eyes," he complained, but then those eyes rested upon the notebook in Neal's lap, cluttered with words that had not been there before. "You've been writing?" Andy's tone changed the slightest, trying not to reveal the disappointment that Neal had been continuing the songwriting process while he slept. Neal would have denied that assumption outright; the words on the page would prove Andy had been with him while writing it the whole time.

Without finding the need to ask or offer, Neal handed the notebook over to Andy, whose eyes slowly readjusted to the light to review what Neal had written. He had years of experience at deciphering Neal's handwriting through corrections and white-outs, but each lyric on the page was immaculate, perfectly aligned with the music that had surprised Andy from the moment it reached his ears. Neal had cleverly masked his true intentions with dark, jarring chords and macabre imagery, but only someone who had known every word Neal Tiemann had wrote, been there for every note recorded to paper - only Andy Skib - could see beyond that filter that he had written a love song.

"This..." Andy trailed off, his wide, inquisitive eyes giving way to a smile and a rising warmth in his chest that was new but certainly not unpleasant. Images and memories rose up in his mind like crocuses, new growth on a fresh grave: how Andy's hand slid into Neal's that first time at a keyboard, clumsily yet so effortlessly, knowing that was where it should stay; the perfect harmony of their guitars and the roar of a crowd the only sounds piercing through a Midwest midnight. How their bodies shivered from more than the cold that first time, how Andy felt frozen from the breeze surrounding them but thawed from the inside out by Neal's touch.

Neal shrugged, cheeks dotted pink, and pulled Andy in closer. "Yeah," he downplayed, saying little because all the words necessary were on that page. There were a lot of emotions poured into those words, declarations made in the dark of night and promises never spoken aloud but ones they forever vowed to keep. It was _their_ story; it would _be_ their story. The one song Neal had written without Andy, he realized as the younger man craned his neck for a kiss, was the one he had written for him instead.


End file.
